The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky arrived this Friday afternoon Swisswhere during the weekend the Global Peace Summit for the war that Russia launched on their country in February 2022. The event will take place in the city of Lucerne and will be “two days of conversations between different nations and united despite everythingwith the common goal of bring a just and lasting peace for Ukraine.”
Nearly 100 countries will participate, including 57 heads of state, along with international organizations, and it will be the perfect setting for them to reaffirm their support for kyiv and “demonstrate their leadership” through their commitment to restoring “the Charter of the United Nations,” added the president.
Thus, the Swiss Executive announced that some of the issues on the agenda will be the promotion of a consensus on a possible “peace framework” and the determination of a “roadmap” on how to address this with the warring partiesas well as freedom of navigation in the Black Sea, the end of bombing of nuclear energy infrastructure, the release of war prisoners and the return of Ukrainian children deported to Russia, among others.
“The Peace Summit will allow the global majority take concrete steps in areas that are important to everyone in the world”Zelensky added and explained that he will give up on gaining support for the most ambitious demands presented in the Peace Formula and, instead, will seek the greatest amount of support for other objectives.
Some of the countries that will join the event are France, Argentina and the United States – which will send its vice president, Kamala Harris, and the National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan -, while others such as China, Brazil and Russia will not be present.
In the case of the first two it is a voluntary decision while in the case of Moscow, his absence is due to the fact that he was not invited. Putin completely rejected the peace initiative that kyiv presented last year since it demands the withdrawal of its troops from Ukrainian territory and the recognition of the sovereignty of all the regions that it annexed in recent years.
However, in recent hours, the Kremlin leader reiterated that he would consider ordering a ceasefire to start a negotiation process only if Zelensky withdrew his troops from the last four places he conquered, in 2022: Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Lugansk and Donetsk. He also made it a condition kyiv’s refusal to join NATOan aspiration of the country that dates back years.
“We would do it immediately”we want a “final resolution” of this conflict, not a “freeze,” and we are “willing to begin negotiations without delay,” he indicated.
However, Zelensky rejected this proposal and described it as a “ultimatum” territorial to which he is not willing to give in.
In the midst of these intersections, the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenbergregretted that “some great powers” did not attend the summit due to their alignment with Moscow, as is the case of Lula da Silva and Xi Jinping, who rejected the invitation due to the absence of their ally.
“I regret that some great powers are not present. It is their decision but it is still an important summit and an important effort that NATO and I support. I think it is an important platform for address how to find a lasting and just peace for Ukraine“, he maintained and insisted that, for such purposes, “Russia has to understand that it has to stop its aggression “And I firmly believe that the stronger our military support for Ukraine and the more committed we are for the long term, the sooner Putin will understand that and the sooner we can have lasting peace.”
(With information from AFP, EFE, Europa Press and Reuters)
